How We Have Changed

We were young and innocent, oblivious to everything. “Babies come from belly buttons’’. That’s what we believed.

We made paper planes and imitated the Power Rangers. Cooked bougainvilleas and leaves on Barbie kitchen sets, playing pretend while mummy cooked in a real kitchen. Boys? Eeeew!

Years have passed since then. Many years.

Now mum expects the cooking to be done on a real kitchen set and we dream of flying away in a real plane. We watch One Tree Hill and 90210 (the new version). We expect to get flowers, not cook them, and we have long stopped playing pretend.

We are not so innocent, and wonder how the younger ones can be so ignorant and oblivious. Boys?

Giggles.

We’ve grown ... everywhere! Suddenly life is so much more complicated than wondering about which toy we want to play with today. Getting up means having to decide what to wear. Every day brings another question. Many of which still remain unanswered.

People have changed. We have changed. Playground buddies are now sliding off different things, and we are swinging in different directions. The Monkey Bar is a new club in town. The grass, as usual, is greener on the other side. Now when we say, “Go fly kites”, we don’t get that enthusiastic response we used to.

Ironic, isn’t it?

When we were young, we used to talk about the future. Now, we try to hide our past and avoid the future. What are we afraid of? Wrinkles? Judgement? Abandonment? Gossip? Loneliness? Hurt? Change? Others? Ourselves.

We used to play pretend, but the world’s a stage, literally, and everyone is an actor. Sometimes we wish we’d stop playing that game, get out of character and costume, remove the masks and write our own scripts.

Conversations took place at slumber parties, and we used to tell stories and giggle till the wee hours of the morning. Now we sit in the dark corners of our rooms and speak to little screens. Our thumbs tend to move faster than our thoughts and we’ve lost the ability to look people in the eyes whilst having a conversation.